Colbert will be back in September, replacing David Letterman, who stepped down in May from CBS’ The Late Show. For a generation that includes me, Letterman really defined the concept of the late-night comedy talkfest. Of course, it will be nice to see Colbert again, but the loss of Letterman — who hosted a late night show longer than anyone in history, including Johnny Carson — is difficult to calculate.

And then there’s Jon Stewart. For nearly 17 years, he has — more than Colbert and Letterman — defined political commentary through the lens of the humorist. Where Colbert skewered right wing faux news shows, Stuart skewered mainstream media and the laziness with which so much of it is practiced today: the celebrity culture, the softball questions masquerading as journalism, the uninformed opinions. Stewart’s reign on The Daily Show ends tonight, of course, and it, like The Late Show, will return in the fall with a new host. But nothing will ever be the same.

True, in recent years, Stewart felt more tired and robotic in his jokes. But ever since his announcement in February that he would be leaving the show, he’s been on a roll. No one has worn his righteous indignation with more intelligent affability. And perhaps no one save Lorne Michaels has launched more television comedy careers. Even within the confines of a 22-minute, three-act talk show format, Stewart raise the game of discussing important things in an accessible and often sadly hilarious way. Few public figures have been at the forefront of gay rights issues like Stewart has been. If you’ve never watched the show, you may be inclined to think he hasn’t had that much of an impact. You would be wrong.

Tonight, when his final episode airs, the end of an era will take place. I’ll be there watching. So let’s raise a glass to Jon Stewart… and one to the health of John Oliver — he’s the future now.

The other night, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart aired a “special report” called Gaywatch, where they took all the top gay stories of the week and put a humorous take on them. Up for skewering: Liz Cheney, Hallmark’s “edited” Christmas sweater, Hawaii’s marriage equality law and one of UrbanDictionary.com’s more colorful definitions.

The Daily Show is always on the cutting edge of progressive causes, including gay rights, but this segment, in which correspondent Al Madrigal goes to Alabama and Mississippi to find out which is more homophobic takes a brilliant, unexpected turn. Without diminishing the bigotry and violence gays face in some communities, it’s a heartwarming and eye-opening look at being gay in the South.

Hilarious actress-playwright Lauren Weedman brings her one-woman show to Out of the Loop

Get this straight: Lauren Weedman is not a standup comedian; she’s an actress who just happens to be insanely funny. There’s a big difference. Even as a straight woman and new mother, the Los Angelena often portrays lesbians in plays she writes. It’s all in a day’s work for a woman making a career channeling multiple characters in a single show with a precision and nuance that’s a joy to behold. This weekend, local audiences have an opportunity to witness her in action in her newest play, No… You Shut Up, part of the Out of the Loop Fringe Festival.

Weedman officially got her big break as a correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and is a regular contributor on an NPR radio show, but her career began long before that.
“I started doing on-camera professional stuff when I was living in Seattle around 1995 when I was on a local TV show called Almost Live,” she says. ”But if you call Indianapolis community theater ‘the entertainment industry’ — and I don’t know if you should — it’s since third grade. I’m show-folk. Or circus-folk. Or a dirty artist-hippy — whatever you want to call it.”

The Daily Show, she admits, was an incredible coup, “even though nobody ever remembers me. And I wasn’t on that much during the year I worked there. And I was fired. Otherwise, wow! What a job.”

Weedman spent five years in Amsterdam studying, writing and performing. Before that trip, she thought she was the shocking one among her friends; but once there, she turned into a Puritan, “mostly about the overall passion for nudity all the Dutch people seemed to have,” she says. “I mean, if I was a seven-foot-tall skinny Dutch lady with uncomplicated nipples, I’d be naked all the time, too. But you just could not keep clothes on those people.”

Her varied life experiences show up in some form or fashion in many of her shows. No… You Shut Up comes to Addison via, of all places, Boise, Idaho, where a theater commissioned a play focusing on motherhood — even two-mommie households.

“Well, it’s a play. That starts to get annoying to hear, at least that’s what my friends always say because I’m always saying it whenever someone refers to it as ‘my act.’ As in ‘Lauren, you should meet my sister. You’d love her and you’d want to put her in your act,’” Weedman says. “I’ve done standup, but it’s not what solo theater is to me. The last two shows I’ve been focused on trying to make a narrative — plot-driven, character-driven, semi-autobiographical, fast-paced dark comedies.”

The rapid-fire switching of characters takes a lot of skill. And Red Bull.

“It’s like a dance, so I don’t have to think about it, or grab a hat and spend 14 minutes changing costumes to become another character. I get bored easily — I like to keep it moving.”

As a strong, funny woman, she naturally attracts her share of gay admirers.

“I think that my solo shows have continued to evolve and get better and better instead of sliding into delusion. All thanks to my very bossy, judgy gay friends, who come and see all my shows and let me know everything that they think. I’m a guest on a Sirius Radio show on Out Q with Frank DeCaro and Doria Biddle and they always make me feel like I’m this gigantic star who is just so underappreciated. So I love those gays. I always say the gays keep me on top because they yell at me and they monitor my weight. So they are like family. They are my family.”

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition March 11, 2011.

We finally got around to watching Texas Gov. Rick Perry on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night. And it turns out the interview contains an interesting discussion related to same-sex marriage. As if he’s reading directly from this blog, Stewart brings up Perry’s statement in his new book that if you don’t like medicinal marijuana or gay marriage, you shouldn’t move to California.

“Even within Texas, it’s not a monolith,” Stewart tells Perry. “You got 55 percent of the vote, and that’s a big victory, but 45 percent of the people in Texas didn’t vote for you. Thirty percent of those might want medicinal weed or gay marriage. Are there certain basic rights that all Americans should have no matter where they live, even if the majority would suggest otherwise? Are you with me on that? And can’t freedom also be protected by government?”

“Absolutely, I get that,” Perry says, before doing some sort of ape-like gesture with his hands on Stewart’s desk and saying that he thinks the federal government should only perform certain basic functions like delivering the mail.

“Do same-sex couples really just want the right to marry that’s afforded to all heterosexual couples, or do they have a more sinister agenda in mind?” Jon Stewart asks at the start of last night’s segment on Texas’ first same-sex divorce case. The segment ends with a straight married couple making out with another woman, and correspondent Jason Jones trying to get in on it. “This is marriage to me,” Jones says. “This is the sanctity of marriage to me. We can’t let gays have all this. No way. They haven’t earned it.” There’s plenty of good stuff in between, including interviews with Dallas attorney Peter Schulte and his client, “J.B.,” as well as East Texas pastor Rick Scarborough, who’s asked whether he’s concerned that “gays are trying to shove their long, thick agenda down your throat repeatedly.” Ultimately Jones concludes that if gays are allowed to divorce, nothing will stop them from the grand abuses of marriage that heterosexuals enjoy, such as furtive gay airport sex. He also says God intended man and woman to be stuck in a loveless union, not gays. Check it out.сайтпродвижения сайта в яндексе

Swisher told me today that a Daily Show crew was in Dallas last week filming for the segment. She said they interviewed the plaintiff in the divorce case, “J.B.,” along with his attorney, Peter Schulte.

The crew then traveled to East Texas to interview right-winger Rick Scarborough, the former Southern Baptist pastor who heads Vision America.

“I think we got good material from everybody, and I think it’s a really interesting case, so it was fun to kind of explore,” Swisher told me. “It’s a great story, just on the face of it, so we’ll have some fun with it.”

Okay. A couple of days ago, I posted a blog here about 10-year-old Will Phillips of Arkansas who has refused to stand up in class and recite the Pledge of Allegiance until there truly is — as it promises — liberty and justice for all, and that includes equal rights for LGBT people.

Will told CNN in an interview that because of his stand, his classmates have made the assumption he is gay and have been making fun of him and calling him “gaywad.”